1925-27 - A revolution betrayed
[from Class Struggle 46 August/September 2002]
One of the most common slanders directed at Trotskyism by Stalinists and their fellow travellers (which have included at various times social democrats, anarchists and nationalists) is that Trotskyists have not played any signficant part in revolutions, or worse, have been counter-revolutionaries. Leaving aside Trotsky's leading role in the Bolshevik Revolution after July 1917, especially as the Commissar for War and Commander of the Red Army, and his subsequent prominent role in the Left Opposition, all of which are exhaustively documented for those who want to know, the best place to begin investigating whether or not this charge is true is China in the 1920’s
We draw heavily on quotes and fraternally plagiarise passages from Revolutionary History 2, (4) Spring 1990. We have adopted the English spellings of Chinese names used in that Journal. Leon Trotsky on China (Monad, 1976) is also an invaluable source for the Opposition Documents of this period written by Trotsky and has an important introduction by Peng Shuzi (Shu-tse), the outstanding original Chinese Trotskyist. The Platform of the Joint Opposition of 1927 has a section headed "The Defeat of the Chinese Revolution and its Causes" which presents the view of all the oppositionists, and not only that of Trotskyists.
The Second Chinese Revolution
The place to start is the years 1925-27. Despite the Left Opposition's attempts to overturn it, the Comintern under Stalin forced the armed workers and peasants into a military alliance with the Guomintang under the leadership of General Chiang Kai-shek. (1)[1] The bourgeois nationalist Guomintang (KMT) organisation was even made a 'sympathising’ section of the Comintern. This policy was known as the 'bloc of four classes'. That is the workers and peasants had to unite with the petty bourgeois and the national bourgeoisie against the landords and the Japanese. Practically this class collaborationist bloc of four classes meant that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) militia was put under the command of the bourgeois leader of the KMT, General Chiang Kai-shek. (2)
When the CCP began to pose a threat to the KMT Chiang Kai-shek turned on the party and massacred thousands of communist militants in these years. (3) The Comintern looked for more 'left’ bourgeois leaders and blocked with two left bourgeois politicans, Wang Jingwei and his Wuhan government, and then Feng Yuxiang the 'Christian General'. This disarmed the CCP and in particular its militant leadership. (4)
Then the Comintern took a sudden lurch to the left and proclaimed a workers’ insurrection. The resulting uprising is known as the "autumn harvest", and was a disastrous defeat. The Guomintang’s massacre of the Canton Commune alone left 5700 dead in a few days. The Stalinists talked about these uprisings as a "new revolutionary wave". In fact this was an adventurist policy that sealed the defeat of the Second Chinese revolution. Thousands of peasants were massacred in the countryside, and the workers movement in the cities was smashed. (5)
So here we have a zig-zag in tactics that led to the massacre of many peasants and workers. Who was responsible? Counter-revolutionary Trotskyists? No!
"The Russian opposition and Trotsky battled against the policy of the Communist International and Stalin. They battled against the zig-zags, denounced the policy of class collaboration which handed over the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese workers to the hangman Chiang Kai-shek, put forward the slogan of 'soviets' when Stalin was busy applying the brake to the peasant movement, and condemned the adventurist, putschist line which followed. At each stage the Russian Opposition denounced the mistakes and dangers in Stalin's policy. The documents of the Opposition tried to warn the party of the dangers to which this policy was exposing the Chinese Revolution, as well as the inevitable repercussions on the USSR and the world revolution" (RH p.7). (6)
These criticisms did not reach the rank and file of the CCP because there was as yet no Chinese Left Opposition and the Opposition’s views on China were suppressed in the USSR. Had these criticisms been known then the independent resistance put up by Peng Shuzi and Cheng Duxiu who both became leading Oppositionists after 1929 would have been strengthened. So Stalin and his henchmen must bear total responsibility for the counter-revolution. Had Stalin fought for an independent, armed proletariat and poor peasantry, then even if these forces had been defeated he could not be accused of responsiblity for that defeat. But he did not and he can be so charged.
Origin of the Left Opposition
The Left Opposition arrived in China as the result of Chinese students being exposed to the LO in Russia while attending universities and military colleges. Before 1925 Chinese students were not warm supporters of Stalin, but neither were they oppositionists. Most went to two universities, the University of the People of the East under its Stalinist director Boris Choumiatsky, and Sun Yat-sen University under Karl Radek and Adolf Joffe, two leading Trotskyists.
After Chiang Kai-shek turned on the CCP and massacred its best militants, the CCP sent between 600 and 800 students mainly to Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow. These students had learned the hard way that they had to become proficient in the military arts and not place their hopes in bourgeois generals. By 1927 many of the Chinese students were participating in LO activities in Russia. Radek was sacked and a number of students were expelled to China. A faction adopting the name "Our Word" was to become the first Chinese opposition group.
Amember of ‘Our Word’ called Wang Wenyuan recounted his comrades’ rapid education in the realities of Stalinism:
"We knew very little about the internal struggles that were going on in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In Wuhan we had been told that Lenin had been succeeded by Stalin, who was now the leader of the Communist movement both in Russia and the world, whereas Trotsky was consumed by personal ambition, was a romantic, and was a militarist man of the Chiang Kai-shek type" (RH, 8)
Despite their desire to understand why the revolution in China had failed the students were wary of expressing their support for the opposition:
"None of us dared or wanted to express support for the Opposition, which had, after all, been denounced as counter-revolutionary...We were very careful about what we said in the course of these discussions...We behaved in this way only because words like "party", "central committee" and "majority" had such a sacred and authoritative ring about them that none of us dared or was equipped to challenge them." (RH, 8)
Participating in an opposition counter-demonstration on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, and seeing a film on the October Revolution allowed these students for the first time to glimpse the real role of Trotsky in making and defending the revolution.
Wang Wenyuan describes how he spend the time between October and December 1927 studying the important documents of the period, in particular those which related to three important issues, the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee, Socialist Construction in the Soviet Union, and the strategy and tactics employed in the Chinese Revolution.
On the issue of the Chinese Revolution he realised that the blame that Stalin placed on the Chinese CCP leaders for the defeat of the revolution was an attempt to evade responsibility for originating the strategy and tactics himself. It was Stalin who had to be judged as to the correctness of entering the Guomindang and subjecting the party to Chiang Kai-shek and the tactic of the 'bloc of four classes'. But Wang had yet to read the Opposition documents or make direct contact with Oppositionists.
When Wang met Luo Han, a student who had contacts with the Oppositionists at Sun Yat-sen University, he was introduced to other Oppositionists and and able to discuss some of their documents with him. Meanwhile the Oppositionists were now being driven out of the party, harassed by the police and sacked from their jobs. Wang arrived at a conclusion about the Chinese Revolution:
"The depth of defeat...was becoming more and more apparent, and we soon realised that it was an illusion to think that after a few months' military training we could return to China and turn back the wheel of history. We were upset by the arbitrary and bureaucratic way in which the Stalinists conducted the inner-party struggle, and the suffocating atmosphere which this created - the gulf between what we thought and what we were allowed to say, between our sympathies and the demand of discipline, grew wider and wider - all 600 of us had just left behind a revolution, and we were restless and full of energy. For young rebels like us, a life of peace and quiet was worse than death." (RH, 9)
A struggle followed between Stalinists and Oppositionists for control of the Moscow Branch of the CCP. The Stalinists won. Meanwhile Wang and Fan Jinpiao read more of the documents of the Opposition. Wang found:
"The arguments and warnings of the Opposition, especially those concerned with the Chinese Revolution, were so obviously true and have so often been confirmed in practice, that I could not help nodding vigorously in agreement as I pored eagerly over them...I now realised that...the ill-conceived policies which had led to the defeat of the Chinese Revolution...had been warned against in advance and could have been avoided." (RH, 9)
He found himself in agreement also on the other key questions. He copied the documents of the Opposition into a series of small notebooks that were to become invaluable in spreading the word.
"From then on I became a "Bolshevik-Leninist" (as the Oppositionists were called at that time)."
During 1928 growing numbers of Chinese students became Oppositionists and a Chinese Opposition was formed in Moscow. About 150 out of the 400 students at Sun Yat-sen University were members or sympathisers. Increasingly, Russian Oppositionists were being arrested and imprisoned. Before long the Chinese students were also under attack. In early 1929 the GPU arrested and removed more than 200 'Trotskyists' from the University. Their leader Chao Yenching hanged himself the next day. Sun Yat-sen University was closed as a "Trotskyist lair". None of those arrested and imprisoned in Russia ever saw China again.
The Chinese Opposition could not be silenced so quickly and easily however. A group of about 10 students who had returned and were expelled from the CCP in 1928 formed 'Our Word' in 1929. They formed opposition groups in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. A second group of students which included Wang got back to China via Korea in September 1929. They reentered the CCP as a secret "October' faction. Wang became a close associate of Chou En-lai in Shanghai.
Liu Renjing returned after having met Rosmer in Paris and Trotsky in Prinkipo. He rejected the idea of joining the CCP and fighting for the Opposition policies in the rank and file. He openly declared himself a Trotskyist and set about forming a separate party, the Militant.
Founding of the Left Opposition
Thus in 1929 three Oppositionist groups existed, two outside the CCP and one a secret faction inside it. Around the same time some of the old leaders of the CCP began moving towards the Opposition. Chen Duxiu, who had been removed from his post as General Secretary of the Party as part of the Stalinist witchhunt after 1927, came out against the Guomingtang leadership. He won over some older members such as Peng Shuzi, Zheng Chaolin, Ho Tzuchen, Yin Kuan, Chaolin, Hotzuchen, Yin Kuan and Ma Yufu and rapidly gained support in the rank and file. Chen and his supporters studied the Opposition documents brought back by the students and now understood the role they had played as Stalin's instruments in the years 1925- 27.
Chen Duxiu was a major acquisition to the Opposition. He was born in 1879, the same year as Trotsky, and was a member of a prominent Mandarin family. He became politically active in 1904 and was influential in the leadership of the nationalist movement that culminated in the first Chinese Revolution, the movement of May 4 1919, for which he was imprisoned. He became a professor at the University of Beijing and by June 1920 he had been won to Marxism. He became General Secretary of the Party in 1921 and led it through the period 1925-27. Because he refused to take responsibility for his role in the defeat of the revolution and allow Stalin to shift the blame away from himself, he was removed as General Secretary.
Chen's conversion to the Opposition created a crisis in the CCP. Stalin and the Stalinist leadership of the CCP conspired to expel Chen's supporters and on 15 November 1929 Chen was himself expelled. He responded with An Open Letter to All the Comrades of the Party. Five days later, 81 old Communists who had had or still had responsibilities in the party made public a text entitled Our Political Position. This declaration came out openly in favour of Trotsky: 'If we had had the political leadership of Trotsky before 1927, we would perhaps have been able to lead the Chinese Revolution on the road to victory." (RH, 12)
These older Communists, who were mainly intellectuals from Shanghai who had joined the party in May 1919, formed the Proletarian Faction. They included Peng Shuzi, a former propaganda chief and editor of the party paper, and Kao Yuhan and Wang Tuching who also held similar positions. The Proletarian Faction spread to most of the other cities including Hong Kong and Macao and reached several hundred in numbers.
Uniting the four opposition groups was a difficult task given the difference in age and experience and the fact that the younger Trotskyists were not at all forgiving of the Proletarian Faction members' role in the defeat of the revolution. Yet they had documents that explained the causes of this defeat and the 'young guard ' and the 'old guard' could now look to the future. Here too they had problems as Chen was convinced that the Third Chinese Revolution would only complete the national democratic revolution, and would not be a socialist revolution. In other words he thought that the national bourgeoisie could complete the national revolution, while almost everybody else argued that they were compradors in the pay of imperialism. He was characterised by Lui Renjing as 'right-wing'. All the factions vied to get Trotsky's support.
Trotsky conducted a extensive correspondence. He welcomed Chen's move towards the Opposition in 1929, writing that 'It goes without saying we can only rejoice in this". When he got Chen's Open Letter Trotsky wrote (22 August 1930):
"I think that this letter is an excellent document. Perfectly clear, correct positions are put forward in reply to every important question; particularly in relation to the "democratic dictatorship", comrade Duxiu adopts an absolutely correct position. At the same time you are writing to me that, if you cannot unite with Chen Duxiu, it is because he still seems to favour the "democratic dictatorship". I think that this is a decisive problem...There can be no compromise on this question. But it is clear that comrade Chen has a correct position in his letter...In the past he has made mistakes, but now he is aware of this. To understand one's past mistakes is profitable for revolutionaries and for cadres." (RH, 14) (7)
It was Trotsky's endorsement that won over the youth to Chen. On 8 January 1931 Trotsky wrote a long and urgent plea calling upon the various fractions to form a 'negotiating committee' in preparation for unity.
Trotsky's sense of urgency was tragically shown to be correct by the 'Jiangsu Affair'. A number of other influential cadre in the party were moving away from Stalinism. They were comrades associated with Li Lisan who was expelled in January 1931, including He Mengxiong, head of the party in Jiangsu, and his associates Liu Weihan, a trade unionist, and Li Juiji, a leader of the Communist Youth section of the CCP. Luo Zhanglong, a leader of the General Union of All-Chinese Labour, was also expelled. These new oppositionists were called 'conciliators', 'rightists', 'opportunists' and 'liquidationists' because they believed that the party had to re-establish its base in the trade unions in the cities instead of relying upon the Red Army and its bloc with the KMT. In this they were clearly moving in the direction of the Left Opposition (RH, 14).
He Mengxiong won over the provincial committee in Jiangsu. But He and 24 of his comrades were arrested by the British police in Shanghai and handed over to the party authorities. The "Jiangsu 25" refused to capitulate and were all executed at Lungwha, near Shanghai on 7 February 1931. This tragedy was to mark the end of the period of relative tolerance towards oppositionists and the beginning of the ruthless Stalinist measures to crush the Left Opposition in China at all costs.
On May 1 1931 the four groups of oppositionists, Our Word, October, Militant and Proletarian Faction, met for three days in Shanghai and united as the "Left Opposition of the Chinese Communist Party”. It took as the name for its journal 'The Spark'. The delegates represented 483 members all up. Chen's view that the bourgeoisie was capable of resolving the democratic tasks was overwhelmingly defeated and he accepted the majority view that "only the Dictatorship of the Proletariat could solve the democratic tasks." Unanimity was also achieved on the Constituent Assembly, the nature of the Chinese Revolution, and the soviets. The leadership of the United Opposition was drawn from all sides of the old divisions: Chen Duxiu, Peng Shuzi, Song Fengchon, Chen Yimou, Wang Wenyuan, Zhao Qi, Luo Han and Zhen Chaolin (RH, 14).
Revolutionary Conclusions
In looking at this vital period of history what conclusions can we draw? First, the true nature of the causes of the defeat of the Chinese Revolution were understood at the time by a number of exceptional comrades of differing ages, differing experience and differing class origins. Some like Chen and Peng were intellectual Bolsheviks who were in the leadership of the CCP during the Revolution. Peng was exemplary in his fight to reverse the Comintern line after his return to China in 1924. Chen buckled in 1923 but recovered to fight alongside Peng to get the CCP out of the KMT from 1925 onwards. Others were students like Wang, who, burning to understand what went wrong, arrived at the truth by finding the documents in Russia. Others again, like the 'Jiangsu 25' who were mainly unionists and local party officials, arrived at the truth by virtue of their immersion in the rank and file of the labour movement and party apparatus. They were snuffed out before they could fuse with the Oppositionists.
Second, all, without exception, had to fight the secrecy and repression of the Stalinist party apparatus to find this truth. When they found it, they became a threat to the Stalinist leadership and many paid with their lives. The hundreds of students arrested and imprisoned in Moscow; the expulsions and executions after 1929, and finally the persecution of the Party in league with the KMT led to many arrests of the Opposition leaders in 1931 and drove the membership further underground. Despite this systematic Stalinist and nationalist repression, the Opposition survived. But that is another story. (8)
All in all, following the tragic events of 1925-1927, the years between 1927 and 1931 saw a remarkable convergence, with the best communists from all sides being drawn towards the Left Opposition by a desire to fight inside and outside the party to create a new leadership that would not repeat the mistakes of the Second Revolution in making the Third. This was evident in the unanimity of the resolutions at the founding conference of the United Opposition.
Returning to the question raised at the beginning, as to whether Trotskyists have made or betrayed revolutions, what can be said about China? In the Soviet Union the Trotskyists warned of the causes of the defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution and attacked the Stalinist ‘bloc of four classes’. In China, some of Trotskyism’s future leaders independently fought for Bolshevik positions on the national question. They subsequently recognised that had they overturned the Comintern’s veto the revolution could have succeeded. They went on to form the Left Opposition and fought for the re-arming of the party, and for the uniting the poor peasantry with the urban working classes. If they failed to win the Third Revolution it was because the Stalinists and the Guomintang conspired to eliminate them as a force for revolution.
Without the Trotskyists in the leadership the Stalinists succeeded in bringing about an incomplete socialist revolution only in 1949. That revolution led to the formation of a degenerate workers' state in which workers never held power. The consequence of that is that today, the Stalinist bureaucracy that came to power in 1949 has converted itself into a new bourgeoisie and has restored capitalism in China. (9)
As Trotsky said many times, an incomplete socialist revolution is prey to capitalist counter-revolution unless the workers rise up and overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy. Without a Trotskyist leadership this was never going to happen. The responsibility for the capitalist counter-revolution therefore goes back to the Stalinist betrayal of 1925-27.
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NOTES
(1) In August 1922 Maring (Sneevliet) arrived in Shanghai with instruction from the Comintern. These were: CCP members were to join the Guomintang as individuals so as to inflluence the national democratic revolution from inside that organisation. Shuzi reports that all the CCP Central Committee opposed this liquidation of the party into the Guomintang. Maring threatened the CCP with Comintern ‘discipline’ and the CCP buckled with the facesaver that the question would be decided at the CCP’s Third Congress. Zinoviev raised the question at the Russian CP Politburo meeting in January 1923. “Except for Trotsky, all the others, such as Stalin, Zinoviev and Bukharin, approved having CCP members join the KMT (Guomintang). The Executive Committee of the Comintern passed a formal resolution along the same lines on January 12 1923. (LTOC, 38). There followed a joint resolution between the Comintern (Joffe) and the KMT (Sun Yat-sen) on January 26. The CCP Third Congress of June 1923 voted for the change of line after a sharp debate. Thus the Menshevik turn was complete.
(2) The ‘bloc of four classes’ was against the existing CCP program adopted at its second national Congress in July 1922 which laid down the method for the proletariat to form a united front of workers, poor peasants and petty bourgeois in support of the democratic revolution, maintaining its armed independence from these other classes. As Peng Shuzi writes, this approach was in line with Lenin’s “Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Questions” of July 1920, in particular the section “…the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks. i.e. those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations. The Communist International must enter into temporary alliances with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form… (LTOC, 36)
(3) Chiang Kai-shek’s coups were the bourgeoisies’ reaction to the Second Chinese revolution that started in 1925 with the ‘May 30 Incident’ when British police killed seven workers during a mass protest in Shanghai. This was rapidly followed by anti-imperialist uprisings and strikes which were met with more repression. The bourgeoisie reacted in fear to this powerful expression of working class struggle understanding that if it did not suppress it, it too would be overthrown. Because of the Comintern’s policy of collaboration many CCP militants were killed. By October of that year Peng and Chen moved on the CCP Central Committee that the “CCP quit the KMT and only cooperate with it outside the party”. This motion was vetoed by the Comintern representative who argued that the CCP should use the upcoming Second Congress of the KMT “to push the whole party into the hands of the left wing, and thus take over the leadership of the national revolutionary movement”. (LTOC, 52). This move failed, and two months later Chiang Kai-shek launched his bloody coup on March 20, 1926.
(4) Not only militarily but ideologically. Peng Shuzi writes how some of the CCP leadership quickly joined the KMT and exaggerated the revolutionary potential of the bourgeoisie. Leading this type of work was Mao Tse-tung. Mao published an article at the time in which he stated that the bourgeois-democratic revolution was the task of the “people as a whole. Bourgeoisie, workers, peasants, students and teachers…but because of historical necessity… the work of the bourgeoisie…in the national revolution is both more urgent and more important than the work that the rest of the people should take upon themselves.” (LTOC, 41). General Secretary Chen Duxiu and other leaders also backtracked and began to sing the Guomintang’s praises. However, the Bolshevik core of the leadership did not surrender and an internal party struggle continued. Peng Shuzi writes that when he returned to China in 1924 he challenged the Menshevik turn. He was made editor of the party theoretical journal and wrote articles arguing that China’s revolution must follow the same path as the October revolution. He wrote that: “…the bourgeoisie due to its close ties with the warlords and imperialists, could never lead the national revolution …Moreover, because of its fear of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie would inevitably become reactionary…only the working class can become the leader of the national revolution.” (LTOC,47).
(5) Peng Shuzi warned of the reactionary Chiang Kai-shek’s counter-revolution through 1925, 1926 and 1927. Under the Comintern’s ‘collaboration’ policy the CCP militants were sitting ducks. By 1927 the revolutionary workers and peasants had formed semi-autonomous organsisations while still tied to the KMT.Chiang turned on the workers and peasants who had been his battle fodder in the Northern Expedition; he closed the unions and peasant associations and assassinated the leaders. He prepared his second coup, a massive massacre of thousands of the best young revolutionary fighters in Shanghai in April 12 1927 with the blessing of the Comintern. “This, then, was Stalin’s final reward for his policy of KMT-CCP collaboration, his unconditional support of the Chiang-led Northern Expedition, his concealment and defense of all of Chiang’s counter-revolutionary activity, and his hopes for Chiang’s success in destroying imperialism and the warlords and completing the struggle for national independence.” (LTOC, 63).
(6) The Editor’s Preface to Leon Trotsky on China [and the documents reproduced in that book] makes it clear that Deutscher is wrong when he states that the Trotskyists’ claim that the “Opposition had from the beginning unremittingly resisted Stalin’s and Bukharin’s ‘betrayal of the Chinese Revolution’ was a legend” since between April 1926 and March 1927 neither Trotsky nor any other Opposition leader “ took up the issue”(The Prophet Unarmed,p 321). On the contrary, “in April 1926 he [Trotsky] demanded in the Soviet Politburo the CCP’s immediate withdrawal from the Kuomintang and its independent struggle for the leadership of the Chinese workers and peasants.”. Also on September 27 1926, Trotsky put a formal resolution [“The Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang”] to the Politburo demanding a change in the CCP’s course in China and calling for “its immediate withdrawal from the Kuomintang. These were followed by two other formal resolutions BEFORE Chiang Kai-shek’s coup, March 31, 1927 [“To the Politburo of the AUCP(B) Central Committee” , and April 3, 1927 [“Class Relations in the Chinese Revolution”]. (LTOC, 23).
(7) In referring to the ‘democratic dictatorship’ Trotsky means the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’ which was Lenin’s formulation for a bourgeois democratic stage of the Russian revolution led by the proletariat and the poor peasants. Lenin changed this conception to the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in April 1917 in line with Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution to signify that the democratic stage of the revolution in Russia would be completed only by means of a socilialist revolution. In China after 1925 it became clear that the national bourgeoisie was reactionary, and that the completion of the democratic tasks of land reform and national unity would require a socialist revolution i.e. permanent revolution. This also made the demand for a ‘democratic dictatorship’ of the workers and peasants reactionary since it did not pose the overthrow of the bourgeoise state forces now mobilised in the form of the Guanmintang, In September 1927 Trotsky wrote: “For us it is no longer a question of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, but of the dictatorship of the proletariat supported by the inexhaustible masses of the urban and rural poor – a dictatorship that poses for itself the objective of solving the most urgent and vital problems of the country and its working masses and in the process inevitably passes over to the path of making socialist inroads on property relations” (LTOC, 266).
(8) We plan to continue this series ‘On Trotskyists in China’ in future issues of Class Struggle
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